What's great about teen fiction is that it's all mixed up - there's highbrow and lowbrow!

In putting setting to work, I like to think about long shots and close-ups. The long shot is the overall view of the place in which the characters live - the island, the town, the wide sweep of place. Then we narrow in. The close-up, the tight focus, makes the place different from anywhere else.

I like the way men cry. They're efficient.

That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.

I like to add props to render the specificities of place - paintings, food, clothing, signs, infrastructure, music, sayings and slang particular to the region and particular to the character. And props shouldn't just sit there; they should get used.

Why is it so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment?